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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26305969">The Forgotten Thing Beneath Your Bed</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuagmireMarch/pseuds/QuagmireMarch'>QuagmireMarch</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Gen, Happy Ending...Sort Of, Pre-Canon, Some references to child abuse and potential non-con, This one is just weird</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:00:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,611</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26305969</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuagmireMarch/pseuds/QuagmireMarch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuuri was human once. Now, he's a shadow monster living under Victor's bed.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Urban Legends on Ice</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Forgotten Thing Beneath Your Bed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Yeah, I...the idea wouldn't go away so here we are.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’d been human once; he knew that. Had a name, a family, things he loved. He didn’t remember what they were, but he remembered they’d existed. He kind of wished he didn’t. Those memories didn’t belong here, in the dark that he’d become. They ached and burned and kept away the cold emptiness that might have given him peace.</p><p> </p><p>Probably that’s why they remained.</p><p> </p><p>But that belonged to Before. Now, he existed only in this dark place, a coiled tendril of shadow. Sightless, motionless. All there was was blackness. And...a voice.</p><p> </p><p>“Mama,” the voice sniffled, soft and aching, “can you leave the light on?”</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t know the language—something sharp like German or Russian—but he knew the words all the same. He spoke Fear fluently. The scent of tears and dread leaked around the edges of his prison, bright and flickering like fireworks in the eternal nothingness that held him.</p><p> </p><p>“Victor, sweetie,” a high voice responded. Distracted. Uninterested. “You’re almost six. Too old for this. Sleep now.”</p><p> </p><p>The fear swelled, more colors rained down. He needed them. Starved and desperate, he reached out, longing as he had not since he wore that long-forgotten skin of a boy. The dark smoke that made him met one bright red mote of fear and images exploded in his mind.</p><p> </p><p>Long, tangled silver hair. Shining blue eyes. For a moment, he saw the child laughing, but that faded to gray as the fears crept in. A monster lurking, slimy and clawed, reaching from under the bed to clutch one unprotected ankle.</p><p> </p><p>It tasted so good. It felt so wrong. Ashamed, he shrunk back into his tiny pocket of night that light never reached far enough under the bed to chase away. He’d been a boy once. Been scared. So, so scared.</p><p> </p><p>Better to starve. And so, he wrapped himself tight, knotting the smoke that made him so that he couldn’t seep out, stretch into the darkness, brush one carelessly revealed ankle.</p><p> </p><p>Above him the boy slept fitfully, dreaming of monsters far more solid than the one under his bed.</p><p> </p><p>##</p><p> </p><p>When light filled the room, shrinking his prison to this one, lonely spot, sometime then he slept. In those moments he almost remembered. Images nudged at the corners of his being—brown fur, a warm place, the sound of skates on ice. Soft, good things.</p><p> </p><p>He woke in agony, hunger raging through him like a fire. Above him Victor slept.</p><p> </p><p>He crawled out, moving in the deepest shadows, avoiding the pool of moonlight from the window and bathing the little boy in silvered light. Slid through the folds of the sheet until he rested against the bare skin of a wrist.</p><p> </p><p>Victor’s dreams burst to life around him. A man. Tall, angry, hair light and eyes dark with anger. Dream Victor huddled away as the man, silent and radiating icy rage, loomed above growing bigger and bigger until he consumed everything, the dream world narrowed to the man’s eyes and thudding pain of fists hitting vulnerable skin.</p><p> </p><p>The monster knew he could merge with the man, morph him into more, heighten Victor’s fear. Feast.</p><p> </p><p>He made a different choice. He infused the shadows of the man’s eyes, the lightless places created in the tight, protective curl of Dream Victor’s body. And then he grew large, his essence stretched and tearing as he made himself big enough to envelop the man, to press against him until he shrank, smaller, smaller. And then nothing. Gone. Consumed.</p><p> </p><p>It did nothing to ease the hunger, this thing he did. But Dream Victor smiled, and outside, in the waking world, real Victor sighed and eased himself into a dreamless rest.</p><p> </p><p>Good enough.</p><p> </p><p>##</p><p> </p><p>One night, when he came in and no one came with him to offer good-night kisses, Victor talked to him. He didn’t realize it at first, the words meaningless static for too many minutes. But, then they became...something. Scared, he guessed. Anxious. Whatever the feeling, it allowed him understanding, if not comprehension. Because what Victor said, it couldn’t be.</p><p> </p><p>“I know you’re why the dreams stopped,” Victor whispered. “Daddy left, you know. He can’t do that anymore, but...I couldn’t forget until you came.” A sniffle, muted. “Thank you.”</p><p> </p><p>Surprised, he reached out without thinking, his smoke a bit of blackness deeper than the room, all that remained of him from so long without food. He brushed an arm and felt the boy shiver.</p><p> </p><p>And then Victor gasped. “You’re sick!” Fear burst through the room, streaks of red and gold against the night-born darkness.</p><p> </p><p>He slid away, ashamed. He hadn’t meant to scare the boy, to show him...whatever part of himself the touch revealed. Cat-quick he retreated to under the bed.</p><p> </p><p>Victor, seven now, the contact had told him, and bruised from ice skating instead of fists, followed. “I’m sorry,” the child said as he wiggled under the bed on his back. “I didn’t mean for you to go away.”</p><p> </p><p>This had never happened, and he didn’t know what to do, so he eased himself to a corner where he couldn’t accidentally harm the child.</p><p> </p><p>“You just felt so weak. It scared me. Are you okay? Can I help?”</p><p> </p><p>He hated hearing that uncertainty in Victor’s voice. He’d been with the boy a long time now, heard him laugh, sing, tease his friends. He wanted only those things for him. So bright and alive and strong. He deserved only good things.</p><p> </p><p>Reaching out, he didn’t touch Victor’s skin but eased himself into Victor’s shadow, touching thoughts and worries. Worries for him. Softly, carefully, he folded around those worried, taking them away.</p><p> </p><p>It tasted good. It felt like peace. The two fell asleep together, under the bed.</p><p> </p><p>He wasn’t hungry anymore.</p><p> </p><p>##</p><p> </p><p>Victor moved away when he was nine. The monster climbed through a tiny rip in a box and went with him. They didn’t talk again, but he didn’t mind. It was enough to be there, with him, to chase away bad dreams and soothe his worries. Enough for the monster to survive. Enough to almost, maybe be happy.</p><p> </p><p>##</p><p> </p><p>Time moved oddly in the world under the bed. He slept more as Victor needed him less, lost track of years and ages until he woke sluggish and slow, depleted in a way beyond hunger. Above him he heard voices, Victor and someone else, another boy.</p><p> </p><p>“I used to believe a monster lived under my bed,” he heard Victor say, laughing. “Except, being me, of course I decided it lived there to protect me.”</p><p> </p><p>“From what?” The other voice. He didn’t care about that one.<br/>
<br/>
Victor didn’t speak for a long moment, the sounds of drinking filling the air. And then he laughed again, too loud. “Doesn’t matter. It was stupid.”<br/>
<br/>
He didn’t hear the rest, the words just so much static. He shouldn’t have understood even that. Victor hadn’t been afraid when he spoke.</p><p><br/>
But then maybe it wasn’t only Victor’s fear that mattered. There was also his own. And his greatest fear had just come true—Victor no longer needed him.</p><p> </p><p>Cold and empty, he curled around his hunger and tried to return to sleep.</p><p> </p><p>##</p><p> </p><p>Something woke him. Tiny, barely there, he stretched himself against the edges of the bed. Flickers of fear, anger danced down. Voices argued. Victor.</p><p><br/>
“I said no.” Firm, certain. But he knew Victor better than anyone. He tasted the worry at the edges of the words.</p><p> </p><p>“Don’t be that way, Vitya. Nobody likes a tease.” Purring, hard. Dark.</p><p> </p><p>A foot rested just under the bed. He reached out, climbed the shadows under the pants cuffs. Touched skin. Felt the man—older than Victor, too much older. A sponsor? He felt oily and sticky to the monster, his thoughts violent. He wanted to hurt Victor, dreamed of it, itched with it.</p><p> </p><p>Urges so dark and cold they made the monster shiver. Through the contact he saw Victor as this man did: beautiful, young (sixteen, he knew because the man did), vulnerable. Alone.</p><p> </p><p>“I didn’t invite you here.” Victor stood tall, proud. But his hands trembled.</p><p> </p><p>The man tried to speak, tried to step into Victor’s space. But the monster twisted. Darkness belonged to him, even when it resided in someone else. He fed. He fed and fed and fed until he felt stretched and bloated, more solid than he’d been since the Before.</p><p> </p><p>The man stopped, shivered. Fell.<br/>
<br/>
For one long moment the monster remained, a blackness too dark in a room too bright. Victor looked. At him. Stared, shocked. Maybe afraid.</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t wait to find out. He retreated back under the bed. Or tried. He didn’t fit, and while still not fully solid, he couldn’t fold and shift the way he needed either.</p><p> </p><p>Victor took a step forward, eyes wide as he reached out. His fingers brushed against the monster and memories erupted between them.<br/>
<br/>
But not Victor’s. The monster’s. <em>Yuuri’s.</em></p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He’s walking to Ice Castle Hasetsu to practice. The car comes from nowhere. He turns. Pain. Darkness. Nothing.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>And then Yuuri is falling, falling, falling. The membrane of his form splits and he is vapor, mist. Memory.</p>
<h3 class="western">##</h3><p>Yuuri wakes in a hospital. He is twelve-years-old and ice skating is playing on the television when he opens his eyes. A silver-haired boy is just getting on the ice. <em>Victor</em>.</p><p>He watches, enraptured. Some part of him knows this boy, <em>longs</em> for him. And right there and then Yuuri decides. He’s going to skate on the same ice as that boy someday.</p><p>And a small, scarred part of his soul, where voices whisper all the worst things and darkness lives, coils up tight and gets just that much smaller.</p>
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